Month November 2014

British Settlers in Algoa Bay, South Africa in 1820. they started arriving in South Africa
at the onset of the 18th century Franco-British War

The start of the conflict between Britain and France at the end of the 18th Century saw Britain make a tactical move for military occupation of territories controlled by its rivals mainly the Dutch, French and the Germans. It began doing so by taking the strategically important step of militarily occupying the Cape, for fear that the Dutch would turn it over to the French and thereby cut the British sea route to the East. The British had occupied the Cape twice: once in 1795 (they withdrew a short while after) and the second time in 1806 (they stayed on that time).

At the end of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, Britain formally purchased the Cape from the Dutch for six million pounds and another colony was added to the growing British Empire. The white population of the Cape Colony in 1806 was of some 26,000 – and a slave population of some 30,000, with an estimated Cape Colored population of 20,000.

The British takeover of the Cape Colony brought in several changes of which the most important was the arrival in of over 3,000 British settlers in the Eastern Cape in 1820 and they were recruited with special financial aid of the British Government to bolster the White population on the eastern border with the Xhosa, where the intermittent race wars were continually threatening to overwhelm the isolated White towns. However, this was not just to increase white population in general but of the white English population as The British were smarter than their rivals when it came to hostile takeovers but nevertheless proved better than the others in other parts of the world except South Africa.

Within a matter of weeks, the influx of a large number of English speaking whites spiked the white population by 12 percent and caused a general Anglicization in the Cape area which affected the Dutch speaking Trek Boers. Although, many of those who had stayed close to Cape Town did not vocally object as compared to the Boers present on the frontiers of modern day South Africa the Anglicization process led to the introduction of English laws: in 1822, English became the sole official language; in the same year, the Cape Coloured population were included in the first labour laws and finally slavery itself was abolished in 1833. Furthermore, the British government offered compensation for the 35,000 slaves in the Cape Colony, to the Trek Boers – but this was only paid out in London, Hence making it practically impossible for most of the slave owners to collect their compensation. This was a major tactic to baffle the Boer people in South Africa.

A combination of factors: the Anglicization policy, the introduction of English law and the then seemingly unending wars with the Xhosas created the Great Trek (participants becoming known as Boer Trekkers, Trek Boer(s) or Voortrekker). From 1836 , around some 15,000 Trek Boer families packed up their goods into canvass covered wagons and set off for the interior, away from British rule. This Great Trek was the final catalyst for the formation of the people who became known as the Boers (the word Afrikaners was only developed late in the 19th century once the language spoken by the White non-English speakers had crystallized). By the time the Great Trek was over, the Boers had been formed into a distinct national identity of their own, fiercely independent and strongly Calvinistic in religion.

The dangers and epic of the great Trek alone have filled many a book: the effort of having to cross the highest mountain range in Southern Africa, called the Drakensberg (the Dragon Mountains – a deserved name) in ox wagons; the necessity of having to create much of their raw material and many supplies along the way; and the trials and tribulations of doing all of this with entire families in tow, was a truly remarkable achievement, and the trek itself came to assume almost superhuman status and symbolism in the White Boer psyche. A small group of Trekkers (pioneers) moved into the interior, into what became the Orange Free State and Transvaal, while a larger group crossed the Drakensberg mountains and decided to settle in what was to become Natal (known today as Kwa-Zulu Natal where Pietermaritzburg, Nkandla and Durban are present).

Drakensburg Mountains

Leaving their jumping off points in the central and eastern Cape, small groups of Whites set off for the interior, with only covered wagons, horses and their ingenuity to guide them as they trekked into the wild, untamed, unknown and dangerous interior. The first small expedition, which started in 1835 ended in complete failure. Jan van Rensburg’s small party was ambushed and exterminated by violent Zulu Blacks on the Highveld field. Yet another party, led by Louis Trichardt, barely survived attacks by Blacks and was then decimated by malaria, with a few desperately ill survivors finally struggling through to the Portuguese base at Lourenco Marques (today Maputo, Mozambique) in Portuguese East Africa. The first two expeditions were therefore disastrous, producing a fatality rate of well over 80 per cent. Nonetheless, the issues forcing the Boers on did not diminish, and slowly over the next two years support for a new migration grew.

Port Elizabeth based Boer Piet Retief, in 1837 organized an expedition from Grahamstown, after issuing a manifesto outlining his reasons for undertaking the Trek into the interior. After joining with an expedition led by Andries Potgieter for the initial trek north, Retief and his party turned eastwards over the Drakensberg mountains (the Dragon Mountains) in a virtually superhuman effort of unparalleled endeavour and hardship. Little wonder then, that when they reached the apex of the Drakensberg, and the green lands of Natal stretched out before their eyes, they called the land Blydevooruitzicht, or Happy Prospects.

There was however one serious issue: the fierce and warlike Zulu tribe under the leadership of their ferocious chief, Dingaan already occupied the new land. While the bulk of Retief’s party – which consisted mainly of women, children and aged men – encamped along the Blaukraans River, Retief led a party of 70 men and teenage boys on a peace mission to Dingaan at the latter’s chief settlement, or kraal, called Umgungundlovu.

The purpose of the mission was to try and peacefully negotiate land for the Trek party from the Zulus. Dingaan however accused the Trekkers of stealing cattle from him; only after several weeks searching did Retief’s party manage to locate the missing cattle (they had been stolen by a local chief called Siyonkella).

On 2 February 1837, the Boers returned to Umgungundlovu with the missing cattle: on 5 February, Dingaan and Retief signed a treaty (Dingaan signed it with a “X”, as he was illiterate) giving the Boers land in Natal. After the signing of the agreement, the Zulus put on a dancing show and celebration. In turn the White Boers gave a shooting and horse riding demonstration to the Blacks: confirming the reports Dingaan had already received about these White men who had sticks which could kill at a distance and who had magic beasts which could carry a rider at great speed.

However on the following day (6th February 1837), the 70 White men were up before daybreak. As they prepared to leave to return to their camp where their women and children were waiting, a Zulu messenger arrived. He carried with him a message from Dingaan asking that Retief and his men meet one more time inside the Zulu king’s enclosure where the two parties would toast their successful negotiations and future friendship.

The Whites agreed. Retief and his men made their way to the Zulu king’s inner enclosure. Before they entered the final ring of mud huts and reed walls, they were asked to leave their firearms stacked in a pile outside as a mark of respect to the king: foolishly they agreed, not suspecting that it was all an elaborate trap and that the Zulus had no intention of honoring their word. The treaty between Retief and Dingaan was still in the pouch the former was carrying. As the White men entered the inner enclosure, the gate was closed behind them. Dingaan greeted the White men, and bid them sit before him. They then drank the crude sorghum beer offered to them, still unsuspecting and full of trust. In the inner enclosure were nearly two thousand Zulus in full combat gear: shields, spears and wooden clubs. Now they had the White men unarmed and outnumbered. At Dingaan’s command they began dancing, shouting and waving their Stone Age weapons in the air.

The White men watched and listened. The Blacks then slowly started moving back and forth: each time advancing three steps and retreating two: gradually they crept closer and closer. At the point where they nearly touched the seated White men, Dingaan jumped up and shouted out “Kill the White Wizards!”

It was too late. the Boer whites realized the treachery which had been played out upon them: a few jumped up and tried to defend themselves with their small hunting knives, but they were no match for the two thousand heavily armed Zulus. Some of them were strangled to death on the spot by crude ropes made of cut up animal skins: the rest were seized, and along with the bodies of their dead comrades, were dragged outside the royal camp to a hill next to Umgungundlovu, called Hlomo Amabuta, the Hill of Execution. This proved the treachery of the Zulus.

The Zulu king Dingaan, chants over the body of the dead White peace maker, Piet Retief. The Trekker leader’s liver was cut out of his body and presented as a gift to Dingaan.

There the Blacks cruelly executed the remaining Whites, one by one, by clubbing and spearing them to death. Last to be killed was Retief himself, after having been forced to watch his own teenage son be clubbed to death. Once dead, Retief’s heart and liver were cut out of his body and ceremoniously presented to Dingaan as proof that the chief White wizard was dead. The White Christian missionary, Francis Owen, whose mission station was situated on a hill overlooking Hlomo Amabuta, witnessed all these events. Despite the tragedy being played out before his eyes, the Christian Owen made no effort to warn Retief’s party, encamped as they were only a few hours’ ride away. Instead Owen fled to the British trading settlement at Port Natal (Durban) a few days later.

A Zulu attack on a Boer convoy.

So it was that no news reached the Voortrekker camp of women, children and old men along the Blaukraans river for ten days: the last word they had received was that Retief had been successful in negotiating land from the Zulus and that everything was in order. An atmosphere of joviality prevailed in the camp: the Trek had paid off. However, the reality was different: during the night of 16 February 1838, the Zulus struck. The Boers’ camps were small, scattered and poorly defended. Filled with a false sense of security, they were easy targets for the 10,000 strong Zulu army sent to annihilate them. Attacking at 1:00 am in the morning, the Zulus fell upon the largely sleeping White camps. The small camp of the Liebenberg family was quickly overrun and all of its inhabitants murdered as they slept. Next the Zulus made their way to the Bezuidenhout camp: Daniel Peter Bezuidenhout saw his wife, mother and sisters slaughtered by the Zulu spears and although badly wounded himself, he managed to escape and riding his horse, warn some of the neighbouring settlements. Still the Blacks pressed home the attack. entire families were killed, with one man grabbing his baby daughter and running for miles through the bush clutching his child to his chest, only to find that she was already dead, killed so efficiently by a spear that she had not even cried out. Finally some of the larger camps managed to draw their wagons into a defensive circle, or laager, and the Zulus were warded off.

But the cost had been frightful: nearly 300 Whites had been killed, including 41 men, 56 women and 185 children. Added to the 70 men killed with Retief, the Blacks had killed more than half of all the Whites in the entire Great Trek in Natal.

The scenes greeting the survivors as daylight broke on the 16 February were horrendous: where the Zulus had overwhelmed the White camps, entire wagons were drenched with gore. Johanna van der Merwe was found dead with 21 spear wounds; Catherina Prinsloo with 17. Elizabeth Smit lay dead, her breast hacked off, with her three-day-old baby beside her. Anna Elizabeth Steenkamp described in her diary a wagon filled with 50 corpses, most of them children, drowned in their own blood. The site was thereafter called Weenen, or weeping, a name it has retained to this day. For a while the entire Great Trek faltered: the Boers grimly held onto their camps, too weak to move on and too weak to stay. The Zulus then turned their attention towards the British trading settlement of Port Natal, besieging the Whites there in what had become an obvious racial war of anti-White extermination. The British garrison, although heavily outnumbered, held onto what would later become Durban, with equally fierce determination, and the Zulus did not manage to break the defenses, despite great efforts in this regard.

After this massacre, the whole Great Trek teetered on the brink of disaster: many wanted to give up and return to the comparative safety of the British ruled Cape, while others then turned their attentions further north even deeper into the interior, into what became the Transvaal and Orange Free State (Moden day Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Free State). There, the first piece of land occupied by Whites there was obtained by treaty from the Bataung tribe, and the town of Winburg was established in this region. The remaining men in the Boer camps in Natal then came to the conclusion that the trek should be abandoned: the losses they had suffered in Natal had been far worse than anything they had endured during their stay in the Cape Province, the ‘kaffir’ (an old ancient term used for rebellious blacks) Wars included. At this crucial junction, the brave Boer women stepped forward and insisted of the men that the Trek continue: too many sacrifices had been made for them to give up now. By cajoling, mocking and in many instances physically taking the lead, the women won the day: the men gave up their plans to return to the Cape and once again drew new strength to carry on.

However, further setbacks waited: a new commando under Piet Uys tried to avenge the massacre of the White women and children: they were defeated by the Zulus at the Battle of Italeni, which cost the life of Uys and his teenage son. Once again the threat of total defeat loomed along with a loss of White life.

News of the plight of the Trekkers had by now reached the Cape: a wave of support came flooding for the Whites, culminating in the arrival of hundreds of new Trek volunteers. Amongst them was a farmer from Graaff Reinett, Andries Pretorius (Pretoria is named after him), a dynamic natural leader who was elected Commandant General by the till then still leaderless Boers in November 1838. Within a week, Pretorius had organized a Boer commando of 451 men, including three British people – – Scotsmen actually, defenders of Port Natal who wanted to avenge the bloody Zulu attacks on the British settlements.

So it was that a combined White Boer and White English speaking commando, armed with two cannons, set off in search of the Zulus. After six days of running battles with Zulu patrols, Pretorius chose his camp: covered on the one side by the Ncome River and on the other by a deep ditch, or donga, the Boers arranged their 64 wagons in an almost triangular shape, with the longest part of the triangle running across the side of the laager which had no natural defense. Ever the improvisers, the White party then cut down masses of thorn bushes and placed them in the donga and underneath and between the wagons themselves, a highly effective early barbed wire.

They also hung lanterns on the end of their long oxen whips, which then protruded out over the outside perimeter of the wagons, providing illumination to prevent a surprise night time attack by the Zulus. Later the Blacks would tell that they had been petrified of the magic of the White wizards, in particular the “ghosts” which hanged above the wagons during the night. Then the Boers prayed to God that if they were granted victory, they and their descendants would celebrate the day for ever more as a sacred day and celebrate it as if it “were a Sabbath”. This vow gave rise the day being called in later times the “Day of the Vow”, although in fact the actual battle, which was celebrated on 16 December, was not the same day upon which the Vow was taken but rather on the day of the battle.

At dawn on 16 December 1838, the Zulus finally attacked. Each Zulu regiment was led by its commander, the younger men in the vanguard, the older veterans making up the rear. As they moved forward, estimates of their numbers varied from between 10,000 and 30,000. They chanted and stamped their feet in unison; a frightening sight by any account. The 451 Whites had little illusion of what their fate would be if the tens of thousands of Blacks overwhelmed their tiny position. Pretorius ordered his men not to fire until they were absolutely sure of making a kill: exercising iron self control, the Whites waited until the Zulu battle line had advanced to within ten paces of the wagons: then the White guns opened up on the Black masses, and the Zulu attackers were cut down by their hundreds. The few primitive spears thrown by the Zulus hardly even reached the wagons. The Zulus fell back, struck down by the White Wizards’ magic killing sticks to which they had no answer. On the river side of the laager, the Zulus at first tried to attack through the water: bringing one of the cannons to bear, the Whites blasted the Black ranks at virtual point blank range, each shot killing dozens of Zulus. Finally the Whites had fired so many rounds they ran out of cannon shot: once again, they had considered this possibility, and had pre-selected and stored suitably shaped stones, which they now loaded into the cannons, continuing to rain a merciless fire upon the Blacks. These cannon were unquestionably decisive: the Blacks had never seen such weapons before, and it must have seemed as if the White Wizards now had fire spitting dragons on their side as well. Again and again the Zulus tried to attack: each time they were driven off by the combined White artillery and musket fire. At no stage did the Blacks even get close enough to stab any White: only two Whites (one was Pretorius himself) were nicked by spears thrown by the Zulus, but that was all. By now, several thousand Blacks had been killed by the White Wizardry.

Blood River Battle monument, Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa.

As the Black line wavered once more; Pretorius gave the order to attack. Leading a detachment of 150 mounted men, one wagon was pulled aside and the commando galloped out to ride straight into the foremost Zulu regiment of over 2,000. Dumb struck with terror at the guns, the cannon and now the White Wizards on their huge hoofed beasts, the Zulu line broke in fright and turned tail and fled. The Blacks tried to outrun the horses: dozens could not and were trampled underfoot. Hundreds tried to dodge the horses and guns by jumping into the Ncome River, which took them above their heads. This was to no avail. The accurate musket fire and the cannons blasted them as they struggled in the river, and the water quite literally turned red with their blood: hence the river became known to this day as Blood River. The Black attack was broken: the Whites pursued the fleeing Blacks until dark, exacting a violent and bloody revenge for the massacre of the White women and children at Blaukraans. Zulu dead at the battlefield itself totalled over 3,000 – but this does not include those killed off site or who died of wounds elsewhere.

An artist’s impression of the battle of blood river.

The highly Calvinistic Trekkers took their victory as a sign from the Christian God that they were meant to win and the belief in a divine mission in Africa was born into Boer consciousness, with the battle later assuming virtual mythical proportions, being celebrated every year thereafter with church services of thanks.

The sheer number of cars and variety among them is a sight to behold at SEMA. From the restomod American classics to the modified imports, the show is something you can spend endless days going through the show and still not see everything. Inside and outside, the Las Vegas convention center is littered with cars everywhere.

Belladonna Ford GT

Magnus Walker’s 78 SCHR

Another Bulletproof Automotive R35 with a fusion of Rocket Bunny and Overtake body parts.

Bulletproof Automotive Varis Kamikaze-R

Another Sarto Racing Mercedes CLK

Vollkommen Design’s widebody Subaru WRX STI

Elvis Skender’s Aimgain LS400 on Work Meister M1. After watching Elvis build both his Aimgain LS400 and then his Aimgain FRS over the course of several months online, it was nice to see them in person.

From the very beginning, Apple has focused its attention on iOS’s accessibility features. In fact, when one turns on their iDevice for the first time, they can quickly enable two of iOS’s accessibility features to assist in the initial setup of the device. If you want to enable VoiceOver, a feature that will read the contents of the screen out loud, simply press the Home button three times quickly right after taking it out of the box. To enable Zoom, a feature that will make the content on the screen larger, double tap the screen with three fingers.

While these features are essential to the operation of the device for many iOS users, there are some aspects of accessibility that can be useful in almost any situation. Here are a few uses of accessibility that I have found to be most useful:

Useful Accessibility Features

Crowdfunding is having monumental impacts upon all across all areas of entrepreneurship. Founders who would once require tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in seed rounds or bank financing are skipping altogether the cumbersome and costly route of equity and debt based funding and instead coming to Kickstarter.

This is changing the face of business as we know it. With just Kickstarter campaigns raising over $112 million in the first quarter of 2014 and $144 million in the second quarter; it’s clear crowdfunding is becoming a prolific player in the power struggle for startup growth.

But launching a crowdfunding campaign is no guarantee of success. I want to focus on the common failure points for Kickstarter campaigns, examine why promising startups fail and learn how to avoid these hurdles all together.

Fatal flaw #1: Poor product showmanship

As a whole, Kickstarter backers are the early adopters, the individuals always looking to get their hands on the next-gen, hip and trendy…

I judge historical choices OUT of context only to guard against repeating mistakes. For the rest, I gladly grapple with hermeneutics. Reading history IN context, when in its time it was ridiculous to find otherwise. That (Apartheid, slavery, Inquisitions) is the way it was and children of their time did what children of their time did. For the same reason we don’t abscond from Christianity simply because Jesus never reprimanded slavery, which, much like Apartheid, was also legal in its day. – Steve Hofmeyr

Steve Hofmeyr is noted South African activist for human rights and a singer, and throughout all these years has been working hard for the preservation of South African heritage both black and white.

The white settlements: Outposts not colonies as harmony was ever present in outposts:

The white settlements in South Africa were rather outposts, not colonies as the Europeans only intended to use the land as a refueling station for their colonial offices in Asia (as Suez canal was not even discovered at that time).

As it is obvious that the first major permanent White settlement in Africa came in 1652, when the Dutch East India Company (a Dutch trading company) sent one of its officials, Jan van Riebeeck, to modern day Cape Town with the intentions of building a resupply station for company ships traveling to Asia and then from Asia back to Europe. As the first White settlement spread around this station, the Afrikaner settlers met the non-Whites, tribes of Xhosa speaking (Khoisan) Hottentots and Bushmen who were happy to trade cattle, produce and other stuff with the new settlers eventually leading to intermarriages and the formation of the mixed race community known as ‘Coloured‘. Though, the region was not a colony but rather an outpost, it became known as Cape Colony.

First farmers of the Dutch community in South Africa

By 1657, it was evident that the company’s farming efforts were inadequate. Hence, a small number of company employees were released from their contracts and were subsequently given uninhabited land to work on as independent farmers which would eventually supply the company’s needs. the first White farmers in Southern Africa – called Free Citizens – were created (Hence the name Orange Free State once given to Modern day Free State). Between 1680 and 1700, the Dutch encouraged White immigration to the South Africa in ever increasing numbers: Dutch, Germans and French Huguenots (Protestants escaping religious persecution by Catholics in France) all started arriving, quickly filling up the region in and around Cape Colony (Cape Town today). However, this immigration caused a wave of exodus of the local Xhosa speaking Bushmen.

Relations with the native Khoisan bushmen became turbulent. At First, their numbers were decimated by the introduction of European diseases to which they had literally no resistance (As their traditional healing methods were of no match to the European medicine), and then slowly they were departed from the area surrounding Cape Town. Since the Hottentots and Bushmen were nomads, there was no claimed land for the White settlers to seize. As the number of White farms increased, the roaming space of the natives grew smaller. The White settlers soon began complaining about stock thefts and petty crimes committed by the Hottentots and Bushmen leading to short and one-sided armed clashes (reminiscent of the wars between Red Indians and American Cowboys) then took place during which the Bushmen (who were never united) moved in large numbers north (Modern day Namibia) where their remnants have remained till modern times. At the same time, the Dutch decided to import slaves to work on farms in South Africa. most of these slaves were Indonesians referred to as Malays (as Indonesia at that time was a part of the Malaysian sultanate who had ruled Malaysia, Indonesia and part of the Philippines). a large number of black slaves from nearby African regions were also called in, with the nearest slave trade station being 1000 kilometers (621 miles apart from the Cape region).

The Dutch East India company, on written order from the Government of the Netherlands in 1652 issued orders for prohibiting inter-racial marriages, on fears of subversion. Simon van der Stel, then Governor of Cape Colony forbid all inter-racial marriages between Cape Colony residents and freed slaves. In 1685, the first law prohibiting interracial marriages in the Cape was formally proclaimed, and a Whites only school had been established for the children of colonists. Eventually the remnants of the Hottentot population, the Malays and Black slaves as well as a number of Whites, mixed together to produce a mixed race group which later was to be called Cape Coloureds. Some of these mixed racial types (Cape Malay & White mixed race) did however “pass over” into the officially classified White group, and modern estimates are that about 6 percent of Afrikaners who claim to be White, are actually of mixed ancestry.

Eventually, the number of white settlers grew & so did the first inklings of a sense of national identity (exactly as had happened in all the other major White settlements in the new lands). Dutch was the common and dominant language in the Cape Colony area, and after some years whites moved into the interior areas of South Africa and spoke an old dialect of Dutch and since they were mostly farmers they began to be called ‘Boers‘ and by this name they are still renown the world over.

Around 1770, some 120 years after the first White settlement was started, the farming community began to push evermore eastward from Cape Town, crossing what is the Southern Cape and finally encountering the first major Black tribe, the Xhosa, in the present day Eastern Cape – some 1,000 kilometres from Cape Town.

The farmers who moved were called “Trek Boers” or “Boer Trekkers” (trek means move) and they pushed further and further into the interior of the country, motivated partly by a desire to obtain new land but also by an increasing dissatisfaction with Dutch colonial rule at Cape Town. After meeting the Xhosa in the Eastern Cape, both the eastward migration of the White Trek Boers and the southwards migrating Blacks came to a halt: on the Fish River border between the two racial groups, a series of nine racial wars took place over a space of nearly 70 years (starting in 1781 and only grinding to a halt in 1857), becoming known as the “Kaffir Wars”. (Although the term “kafir” has of course come to be derogatory, the actual word itself is of Arabic origin, “khufr”, meaning non Non-Christian or Muslim, and thus equally applicable to Whites or any other racial group).

Eventually their Treks eastwards in to areas of Modern day Port Elizabeth led to race wars between the Xhosas and The Boers. these race wars severely tested the resolve of the Boer Trekkers, and later the British settlers in the area with many atrocities being committed by both sides mostly in retaliation for earlier attacks and often sparked off by cattle thefts. The wars came to an eventual end in 1857, after a Xhosa prophetess convinced virtually her entire tribe that a spirit had spoken to her and had instructed all the Xhosa to kill their cattle and destroy all their supplies.

On February 18th, 1857 – the sun would arise blood red in colour and all the dead Xhosa warriors would rise from the dead and sweep all the Whites into the sea – a violently anti-White outpouring which was not unusual for the time in what turned out to be a major disaster for the Xhosa, they followed this prophetess’ advice, destroyed their stores, killed virtually all their livestock and settled down to wait for their dead warriors to arise. Fortunately for the Whites, this was where the plan went wrong: on the appointed day nothing happened, and after several weeks, Xhosa power was broken by a combination of starvation and disillusionment. As a result, the Xhosas were dealt a heavy defeat and the Boers became victorious.